Isn’t the starry bowl pretty? My Mom was sweet and sent us two of them after I had mentioned that I wanted them, but couldn’t justify getting them right now. I had cereal, yogurt, and fruit salad leftovers in it and it was the perfect breakfast size.
They didn’t get here in time for the 4th of July breakfast (that I have rechristened “Ice Cream for Breakfast Day” to better explain it to people.). We couldn’t find good blueberries this year. The ones in our shopping order were sneakily moldy, so I had to throw them out. I like breathing and mold makes that stop pretty regularly. We didn’t have time to try and find more of them. We just used blue bowls instead!
We had strawberry shortcake with homemade “Busy Day Cake” from the Better Homes and Gardens book for the 4th of July dessert with my in-laws. We sat in their gazebo in the yard and had delicious burgers and sides. I, of course, brought dessert.
My younger brother is staying with us for a bit and is an excellent cook, so he’s made us a couple of good meals. I don’t have a picture of the Instant Pot pulled pork, but have it on good authority that it was delicious. He made his own BBQ sauce and I believe added hard cider to it.
I do have a picture of the yummy chicken, potato wedges, and salad that he made. Yesterday he made jambalaya with smoked turkey sausage and shrimp. We’re going to miss him when he moves out.
Tonight we had a deliciously spicy, oh so tender, beef ribs from the Instant Pot. I used this recipe: http://foodyschmoodyblog.com/instant-pot-country-style-ribs/
We used a Chophouse spice mix from the Pepper Palace. We bought that on our California trip forever ago. I had forgotten how yummy it is. I even mixed my meat with my potatoes! I will definitely be making this again. The Instant Pot has been getting more use, since it’s ridiculously hot.
One Instant Pot recipe that I was very disappointed in was a Moroccan Lentil Soup from I heart vegetables. It was so bad that I’m not even going to link the recipe. Also, it won’t let me link it for some reason, so it worked out. It was so watery and bland. I felt like I was just eating water with some weirdly cooked lentils in it. Blech. Even adding more spices at the end didn’t help and I ended up wasting a lot of it. I accidentally added carrots and celery and even that didn’t help. We had extra basmati rice from the pork that the boys ate that night, so I added those on the bottom.
I will not be making this again, although I would like to find a good lentil IP recipe.
Luckily, I redeemed the lentils by making IP Korean beef from Damn Delicious. Recipe is here, although I’ve probably shared the recipe several times. We have it about once a month because it’s that good. https://damndelicious.net/2018/02/21/instant-pot-korean-beef/
I made a fruit monster salad too! Basically any fruit in my house gets tossed together. I love summer.
We had lava cakes again, although I made them in the oven this time. It makes 3 tiny cakes, so the perfect size for our dessert. Really, you can’t go wrong with ooey gooey chocolate. Mmmmm…
I have made a couple of fun breakfasts. I used rhubarb from the garden for this rhubarb pecan bread. It’s good, but needs a little more flavor.
We’ve eaten a couple of fun fried dinners. I made chicken tenders with my own recipe. Penzey’s Cajun seasoning in the flour/panko mix breading and salt and pepper in the flour step. 3 step dredge and fry. Baked frozen fries and some fruit as well. They turned out pretty good. My brother looked at me with big eyes when I asked him how many chicken tenders he would want and said “ALL OF THEM.” He had visions of a fried chicken sandwich the next day for lunch. 🙂
Before my brother was here, we tried tempura fried shrimp and veggies, from Jet Tila’s cookbook.
The dipping sauce I had was just some sweet chili sauce. It was fun to try and pretty good. Pretty messy though! I especially enjoyed the zucchini. The Husband liked the shrimp and mushrooms, but spurned the other veggies, of course. We would make this again! It wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be and fun to have a different sort of dinner.
The Brother doesn’t eat a lot of dairy, so we had chicken sausage pasta. It was good, as usual. The sauce wasn’t as thick as it normally is. I used our last jar of homemade garlic pasta sauce. I’m waiting for tomato canning season to start so I can make more sauce. Hopefully make all the jams I didn’t finish last year too. This year, I will pick cooler weekends though. Our air conditioning is super cranky and old.
We had a veggie filled beef stir fry too. No recipe, just threw together everything until it looked good. I cheated and used hoisin in the sauce, so it had a good flavor.
We’ve been craving comfort foods lately, so the Husband requested a pot roast. It turned out very tender and yummy. I used basil and some seasoned salt along with the pepper and Wochestshire sauce.
I tried to make puff pastry, but ended up kneading it too much in the food processor and ended up with the flakiest pie crust ever.
We used it for chicken pies. They were yummy and now I know the secret for super flaky pie crust. Hint- it’s tons of butter. 😉
I think a good buttery recipe is a good way to end this post, so I hope I made you hungry! As Penzey’s says “Love people, cook them tasty food!”
